From: Associated Press - National (New York, NY)
Five months into President Barack Obama’s second term… former White House insiders, including longtime Obama adviser David Axelrod, say Obama needs to make his case anew for government’s role in expanding education and innovation and to give, as Obama put it in one of his early seminal speeches, “every American a fighting chance in the 21st century.”
As these Democrats see it, there has been an arc of Obama addresses that have spelled out the challenge and the hope of attaining the American Dream, from a 2005 commencement address at tiny Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., to his speech in Osawatomie, Kan., in late 2011, and that the time for another one is now… Read more…
From: Connecticut Post (Bridgeport, CT)
Ask friends how many emails they have sitting in their inbox or how many photos are saved to their laptop, and don’t be surprised if the numbers tally in the thousands… All of this digital detritus is not a problem unless it interferes with your life, work or happiness, according to Tim Kasser, a psychology professor at Knox College, in Galesburg, Ill.
“If this acquisition of ‘e’ stuff ends up leading to a lifestyle that forces you to have less time for your family, or less time to draw or play music or run around in a park, or less time to be involved in your community, then I would say that to me is a problem,” says Kasser… Read more… Also reported in the Tampa Bay Times and other media via the Associated Press.
From: NPR (Washington, DC)
In a broadcast report on federal charges that Illinois “misled investors about the [poor] health of its pension funds,” NPR featured comments from Knox graduate Laurence Msall ‘84, President of the Civic Federation. Msall said that the complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission is “yet another wake-up call for all of the states, that the federal government is concerned about the level of debt and level of unfunded pension liability…” Read more…
From: The David Madeira Show
Knox College senior Alex Uzarowicz was interviewed by The David Madiera Show on WTRW Carbondale, PA. Uzarowicz discussed a commentary he published on January 27 on The College Conservative. Uzarowicz told Madiera:
“Being on a college, everyone’s talking about how we have to enact drastic gun control laws. That’s not the solution. I believe the solution rests in the family. Right now, children talk to their parents on average 3-1/2 minutes a day, and they watch about 200-thousand violent acts by the time they turn 18. Those are statistics that should make everyone feel awkward. Perhaps what we’ve been doing has not been helping our kids…” Read more…
From: The Washington Post (Washington, DC)
In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Jonathan Turley ‘83 writes: “Free speech is dying in the Western world. While most people still enjoy considerable freedom of expression, this right, once a near-absolute, has become less defined and less dependable for those espousing controversial social, political or religious views. The decline of free speech has come not from any single blow but rather from thousands of paper cuts of well-intentioned exceptions designed to maintain social harmony…” Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University. Read more…
From The Register-Mail:
…I plan to write about President Obama’s foreign policy over the next months in the pages of the Register-Mail. The challenges for the United States in the age of global terrorism, escalating proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and in the growing pains of international political and economic development are many.
There is no greater challenge than refining a policy strategy that meets the objectives of practicing and defending the ideals of the United States, while sustaining U.S. security and commitment to global and regional stability. While the president must be a realist, assessing genuine needs in terms of U.S. national interest, he must also embrace the idealist core of American principles of democracy and freedom-promotion. He must prioritize as well…
L. Sue Hulett is the Richard P. and Sophia D. Henke Distinguished Professor of Political Science and chair of the Political Science Department at Knox College.
